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Going Beyond Meat and other healthy recipes for 2015

I’ve been very busy in my kitchen as I’m wrapping up my plant-based/vegan chef certificate. I hope I’ll be able to devote more time to teaching, coaching and writing over the next few months. I have prepared quite a few delicious meals and will keep sharing them with you. Hope you can use them as inspiration to make some amazingly delicious meals in your own kitchen 🙂

First, I’d like to share a great tip about lemon and lime water. I like to squeeze the juice from a half or even whole lemon or lime into water served both cold or warm. I try to drink at least one glass lemon or lime water a day. Many people recommend doing this first thing in the morning. There are some amazing benefits to adding lemon and lime to your water including; a great source of vitamin C, boosts your immune system, helps with your digestion and assists your liver in your bodies detoxification process.

Another great company I’d like to share with those who don’t know is Vegan Cuts, Vegan Cuts is a really cool vegan product delivery service that will send you tons of great premade packages or speciality items to your own home. I purchased this detox package below as a detox test for myself. I really enjoyed it and felt great while I was using it. The stuff really works! Check out other products on their website, they also have some great ebooks as well, super fun stuff!

Quick and Easy Bruschetta Toasts:

For those who can eat gluten this is a great quick meal or appetizer (you can also use a gluten-free bread). This is really yummy served in the summer when you can purchase farmer’s market produce. I also spread a little hummus on the toast before putting on the tomato mixture. This is also something very healthy that many people would enjoy, great for parties. Obviously you can leave off the hummus or olive, onions, etc and modify as you would like. I just kind of throw the ingredients together and see how it tastes, and modify as I like, it always tastes delicious.

Several slices of crusty white bread, toasted lightly on both sides. Be sure the bread doesn’t contain eggs or dairy and has limited preservatives.

Combine in a bowl these next ingredients and allow to sit and let the flavors develop 30 minutes to 1 hour:

5 or so Tomatoes (any type but Roma tomatoes are usually best), diced

1/4 Red Onion, small diced

7 or so Kalamata Olives, small diced

2 Garlic gloves (more if you like Garlic, like I do), minced

5 or so sprigs of Basil, finely chopped

2 Tbsp Olive oil (or more if needed)

Salt and Pepper to taste

Assemble your toasted bread, spread a layer of store bought hummus on the toast, top with the tomato mixture. Broil in the oven about 5 mins or until tomatoes are just soft.

I also made a fantastic Plant-Based Goulash with this wonderful new product Beyond Meat. This product is really exciting for me, I’ve been seeing it advertised everywhere and it has the power to save millions of animals!!! There have also been some great coupons offered, keep an eye out, it is good stuff. You can find it quite a few places; Target, Whole Foods. It tastes really good to a vegan but it also tastes very good to people who still eat meat. I’ve been looking for a good recipe to use Beyond Meat in for quite sometime and modified this Goulash one a bit, I think it turned out pretty tasty, great for a cold winter day.

1 (6 oz) can tomato paste (I added this but you could easily leave it out because it makes it a little too pasty for my taste)

Makes one large pot of goulash, served my family of two for two nights

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 30 minutes

Directions

Bring a large pot of water to boil and cook the macaroni as directed on package to desired tenderness. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large pot on medium heat, add the onion and garlic and saute a few minutes until fragrant. Add the diced bell peppers, yellow squash and zucchini and grated carrot. Continue to saute 5-10 minutes until the vegetables are soft. You may want to add a bit of water to the pot to help soften up the vegetables and prevent them from sticking to the pot, about 3 tablespoons.

All my veggies chopped and ready for saute.

Next add the nutritional yeast, spices, salt and pepper, diced tomatoes and tomato paste and stir until combined. Cook an additional 5 minutes to soften the tomatoes and bring the flavors together. Then add the Beyond Meat.

Drain and add the cooked macaroni and continue to cook everything a few minutes more until hot.

You can add any combination of veggies that you would like, I just really like the squash and tomato combination. The spices are also fantastic and you can add additional ones or more if you wish. Experiment with this one, it is very good. So is Beyond Meat, I highly recommend 🙂